Can I ask as a long term 360 player why should I buy a xbone over a PS4. By all accounts the PS4 knocks the socks off of the xbone resolution wise and has a much more powerful GPU. I want to buy an xbone and a lot of the guys I played BF with on 360 have an xbone but Im struggling to justify one over the PS4 purely from a hardware perspective. I dont have the full picture of any next gen console, just what Ive read so far so would appreciate what you people on the other side of the fence think. I used to use the media side of the 360 which would have been a plus but have other superior kit now so wouldnt use that side of things and the kinect...pfttt!
Thanks
Absolutely love my XB1. You'd have to pry it out of my cold dead hands to get it off me. I had both consoles on pre-order and had the full intention of getting both. Don't know why, but the way Sony kept having snide little digs at MS and the vision they had just rubbed me up the wrong way so I cancelled and figured I'd buy one when there was a game out for it that I wanted.
Saying the PS4 is streets ahead of the XB1 for resolution etc. is a bit outdated now. At the start certain people (mentioning no names here, I'm amazed he hasn't cropped up in this thread yet
) said that the XB1 just couldn't handle 1080p and 60 fps, even though for a long time the XB1 was the only console with an exclusive AAA 1080p 60fps title (Forza 5). Since the June SDK where they released a bit more of the reserved GPU power many more titles have been announced at 1080p. The next big thing Destiny will be 1080p and looks to be complete parity between both systems.
The hardware in the XB1 is custom versus the off the shelf SoC that Sony went for. On paper it looks like the PS4 GPU wipes the floor with the XB1 with 18CU versus 12. Cerny himself said that the PS4 is balanced 14:4 though. 14CU for graphics and 4 for GPGPU. XB1 has custom little processors that are specialised and offload the GPGPU work so the 12CU of the GPU can be used for graphics, so it's really not that different.
I'm going out on a limb here (and some people here think I'm crazy for it) but I also believe there's something in the XB1 hardware that they haven't announced yet. There are numerous reports of people saying that the hardware isn't the full story (including the digital foundry breakdown of the hotchips presentation). MS did it with the 360. They hid a whole chip in there for a year before they announced it and gradually unlocked new features that the console could do over its lifetime to developers so it kept growing. It worked last time and I think they're doing the same thing again. They stated that it's a marathon not a sprint.
The next big thing for XB1 is DX12. Now there are conflicting reports on this. Some say that it will benefit the console greatly and others say it won't (and some of the naysayers are Sony first party developers that don't work with DX so how the hell they know I have no idea!). Phil went on record saying that the XB1 will support DX12 FULLY. Current GPUs will be able to use many of the new features of DX12, but for them to be FULLY compatible they need some new hardware. Hardware that I think is already in the XB1 and isn't being used yet (again this is only me though, most people here don't believe it). We already know that there's hardware support for tiled resources which is the next big thing in how games are going to be coded (the PS4 will do them as well, but it'll have to be done in software not hardware which won't be as good). Think about it, if a game is being developed for PC on DX12 and the XB1 is DX12 and the PS4 is OpenGL, which do you think will get the better port?
There's a crazy site called MrXmedia on livejournal where they believe that there's all sorts of crazy hardware hidden in the XB1. Now I don't believe to the crazy arse levels that they go on to, but I do believe there's something there. MS paid $3 billion for the XB1 SoC, way way more than Sony did as they just bought of the shelf. I don't believe they spent that much money and came out with a weaker console. It may not be more powerful, but I don't for a minute believe it's as underpowered as it seems at the moment. It's custom hardware may take a while to come into its own (as it is with Destiny now) but I can see it being at least on parity with the PS4 from now on. The XB1 is bigger with a much bigger cooling solution and has an external (more powerful) PSU. I don't believe MS would over engineer the box to that degree. It's certainly not in response to the RROD as some think as that had nothing to do with overheating, it was the lead free solder that they used initially and was sorted without making the 360 box any bigger.
The next thing is that the console brings new things with the cloud. Again, people will say that the cloud can be bolted onto the PS4 and again it probably can, but just not as effectively as the XB1 can use it. The XB1 was built with the cloud in mind and its hardware reflects this. It's got built in on the fly encode and decode and move engines up the wazoo that mean it can do more with the cloud over the long run.
My firm belief (and it is only my belief, I may be wrong) is that the PS4 was built to be a very powerful console for how games WERE coded, and during the changeover from old hardware to new hardware where developers are supporting both generations, are still coded. I believe the XB1 has been built for how games are GOING to be coded. We might not be seeing the best out of it yet while the old engines are still around, but I believe once DX12 comes in (in a few months) we're going to see a bit more.